British Students at the International Lenin School: The Vindication of a Critique

This paper is a response to the rejoinder by Gidon Cohen andKevin Morgan to a critique of their article on British studentsat the International Lenin School (ILS) in Moscow which appearedin a recent issue of Twentieth Century British History. It developsthe criticism of their data and research methods, and the revisedresults and conclusions they derive from them, while takingissue with their approach to historical argument. It demonstratesthat the presence of ILS graduates in leading positions in theCommunist Party of Great Britain and in the apparatus of theparty did not, as they insist, disappear after 1943, but persistedinto the 1950s.